Multiple risk factors: key points

• Risk factors are recognised as important aspects of public health.
  
• They are often considered in isolation, and in relation only to specific diseases.
  
• Risk factors may interact, so that having two may have greater effect than may be expected from the effect of each.
  
• When two or more risk factors are present in an individual, there is an opportunity to address more than one at a time.
  
• It is estimated that 22% of the population of Scotland (aged 16 to 74 years) has four or more of the seven major risk factors for death, disease and health problems (smoking, high alcohol consumption, poor diet, lack of physical activity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity)
  
• It is estimated that about 50% of all mortality can be attributed to the top 20 risk factors (singly or in combination) in the developed world (WHO Comparative Quantification of Risk). Therefore, in 2003 nearly 30,000 deaths in Scotland can be attributed to these risk factors.